A Social Media Marketing strategy can't be measured by these common KPIs
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Hey! How is the week going?
While I finish next week’s subscribers-only issue –Stop Gating Content – Why The Traditional Marketing Funnel is Dying–I wanted to start a thread and open it for discussion with you!
A few weeks ago, I had a conversation with a startup (B2B SaaS). They’re growing fast, they’re doing a great job, and the product is awesome.
We were talking about their overall Marketing and Growth strategy when one of the founders said:
“I think we should cut off our social media efforts”
What. The. Hell. My heart stopped.
Their social media content and distribution strategy are awesome. They keep producing and repurposing their content in ways I haven’t seen before, both with their brand and personal accounts. They built a great social media audience over time, and most importantly, their audience was an engaged one.
So, why would they cut off their efforts?
Simply put, it wasn’t generating a noticeable number of trials/signups, according to their analytics/attribution tools. In other words, they thought those Social Media efforts weren’t paying off in terms of revenue.
I told them to survey their paid customers before making a final decision by asking them one single question:
Where did you hear about [company] the first time?
BOOM! It turned out that around 35-40% of their paid customers knew them thanks to all the content they were sharing on their social media platforms.
This is WHY you shouldn’t measure/quantify your Social Media Marketing strategy success by the traffic, signups, trials, or even the revenue it directly generates.
That's not the goal.
Most of the content you put on social platforms has the sole purpose of engaging with your audience.
So when they're ready to buy, they think about you.
It happens all the time. Your audience keeps engaging with your content, and at the moment they have a need you can satisfy, they'll remember you.
This is a reality for most SaaS companies.
The problem is that analytics/attribution tools won't tell you, "Hey, your social media channels are killing it".
What do to do instead 👇
✅ Measure your engagement – Followers don't matter. What matters is how they engage with your content. Comments, DM's you get from people, how much your content is shared, etc.
✅ Go qualitative – When your audience reaches out to you and asks for a demo, trial, or sign up for your product, ask them where they first heard about your brand. You'll be surprised.
✅ Check on your branded keywords – Another way is to analyze the search volume and the traffic you're getting from your branded keywords over time. Great Social Media strategy = 🔼 Brand Awareness = 🔼 Website Traffic
Did I miss anything? What else would you add? Let me know in the comments or follow me on Twitter👇
Feb 11, 2022·edited Feb 11, 2022Liked by Borja Prieto
I definitely think this applies to most social media platforms (except for YouTube). I wish more people in positions of leadership overseeing these efforts shared your thinking. 🙌
The problem I encountered when I worked more heavily as a social media marketer was lack of patience from leadership with organic efforts (plus what you said about measuring success in the wrong way).
YouTube though is different.
For example, our channel at VEED helps us drive traffic to generate new free/paid users. So much so we ended up building a whole entire video team to help maximize our efforts. The key though to aligning YouTube with growth was looking at what videos are responsible for driving the most traffic and why?
The other problem many brands have with social is they become obsessed with growth on the platform they never find the sweet spot of content that:
👉 grows your channel/page
👉 supports the business in a measurable way
Instead, too many obsessed over followers and engagement without knowing if the way they drive that engagement and account growth makes sense for them.
You can apply similar thinking to Instagram although I wouldn't measure organic Instagram efforts as aggressively in terms of traffic. But for example you can pinpoint:
1️⃣ What posts drive the most link in bio clicks or swipe ups and why?
2️⃣ When throughout the day or week does this tend to happen?
3️⃣ What posting patterns did you follow that week/month as a whole to get that type of engagement?
I definitely think this applies to most social media platforms (except for YouTube). I wish more people in positions of leadership overseeing these efforts shared your thinking. 🙌
The problem I encountered when I worked more heavily as a social media marketer was lack of patience from leadership with organic efforts (plus what you said about measuring success in the wrong way).
YouTube though is different.
For example, our channel at VEED helps us drive traffic to generate new free/paid users. So much so we ended up building a whole entire video team to help maximize our efforts. The key though to aligning YouTube with growth was looking at what videos are responsible for driving the most traffic and why?
The other problem many brands have with social is they become obsessed with growth on the platform they never find the sweet spot of content that:
👉 grows your channel/page
👉 supports the business in a measurable way
Instead, too many obsessed over followers and engagement without knowing if the way they drive that engagement and account growth makes sense for them.
You can apply similar thinking to Instagram although I wouldn't measure organic Instagram efforts as aggressively in terms of traffic. But for example you can pinpoint:
1️⃣ What posts drive the most link in bio clicks or swipe ups and why?
2️⃣ When throughout the day or week does this tend to happen?
3️⃣ What posting patterns did you follow that week/month as a whole to get that type of engagement?
Haha long comment 🤣 I really love this topic